Tuesday 18 March 2014 11.40 EDT
First published on Tuesday 18 March 2014 11.40 EDT

Israel will act "forcefully" to defend itself, the country's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said after a blast wounded three soldiers in the occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday.

"We will act forcefully to preserve Israel's security," he said in remarks broadcast on army radio, saying there were an increasing number of jihadists and operatives of Lebanon's Hezbollah on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights plateau.

A statement from the Israeli army said: "An explosive device was detonated against IDF (Israeli military) soldiers patrolling the Israeli-Syrian border." It added that several soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Security sources confirmed the bombing, saying the explosion damaged an army jeep as it drove near the ceasefire line with Syria, outside the Israeli Druze town of Majdal Shams, without giving further details.

It was one of several incidents this month on Israel's northern borders with Syria and Lebanon.

Israel said on Friday that it had shelled a position belonging to the powerful Sha movement Hezbollah inside Lebanon, in response to a blast targeting its troops along the border. In a separate incident on 5 March, Israel said it had opened fire on and hit two Hezbollah members as they tried to plant a bomb near the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line.

Hezbollah, which supports the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has threatened to retaliate after an air raid in February, in what was first reported Israeli strike on the group inside Lebanon since a devastating 2006 summer war between the arch-foes.

There was no immediate indication that Hezbollah was involved in Tuesday's blast.